September 22, 2011

This is 26 teaspoons (or 110 grams) of sugar. It is what the average Canadian eats every day. That's 88 pounds of sugar a year. What foods do we eat that has all this sugar?

Top ten sources

Ten sources accounted for approximately 85% of total sugar intake (Table 2). Almost half (44%) the average daily sugar intake of children and adolescents came from beverages, specifically milk (20% at ages 1 to 8; 14% at ages 9 to 18), fruit juice (15% and 9%), regular soft drinks (4% and 14%), and fruit drinks (6% and 7%). Milk was the primary source of sugar among children aged 1 to 8, but by ages 9 to 18, regular soft drinks ranked first. Beverages accounted for 35% of adults’ daily sugar intake. Fruit also ranked high as a source of sugar: 15% for children and 17% for adults; apples and bananas were the most popular (data not shown). The percentage of sugar derived from confectionary items (for instance, chocolate bars, candies) was about twice as high for children (9%) and adolescents (10%) as for adults (5%).

MILK! is one of the main sources. Did you know that? And by the way, the lower the fat the milk, the higher the relative amount of sugar in the milk. Then good old healthy juice! Pop and fruit follow.

But fruit is good for us right? Eat an heirloom variety of apple and you will then understand how modern plant breedig has made our fruit so much sweeter. Today's fruit is not the fruit of 50 years ago. Had a grapefruit recently?

None of this study looks at how HFCS is added to nearly every item of processed food. My sense is that these are low numbers compared to what we really consume.

You can draw your very own things in 3Dtin and I’ll build them for you in plastic.

Right now, I am just an idea. I will be as easy to use as an Xbox or Wii. I’ll be as big as three Xbox 360s and as expensive as three Xbox 360s. I will sit on your desk and quietly build your ideas, drawings and dreams.

There are other 3D printers. But none will be as easy to use as I will. None will be as reliable or work as hard for you. I’m not a kit or an industrial machine. I’m not complicated. I’m an appliance, like a toaster or a microwave. Only I’m purple and make your stuff.

You don’t have to be ten to use me, but it helps. Sure adults are older and can do lots of different things such as drive a car and use a drill. But, adults aren’t really good at imagining things. They’re afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of not making the perfect thing. They see the world as it is, not as it could be. They see what can’t be done, not what could become. Kids are not afraid. They’ll draw anything and everything. They’ll make whatever it is they feel like. They’ll imagine, dream and create. And that’s what I’ll help you do. You could share me with your brothers, sisters and parents and make together. You could teach them how to make the world as they want it to be. Most of all though, I’m a tool for you.

Once upon a time… Artur spent a lot of time making 3D printed things. Artur made wind chimes, sample kits, ways how to get your sketched made steel, titanium tidbits and a new kind of paperclip. 3D printers were complex and expensive machines with low reliability. They were hard to operate. You had to be a designer to make things, you had to spend a lot of time learning how to 3D print and you had to spend months learning how to 3D model. It was 2010.

It was clear that one day… one day… 3D printing was going to be the technology that would let people make whatever they want to make, on their own terms. But it would take years of gradual improvement for existing 3D printers to become good enough to function in the home. Artur thought, “what would a 3D printer that would work in the home look like? What if we could make it easy enough so that kids could use it? What if it could recycle its own material? What if it was affordable and easy to use? What if it would just work, all the time. What if we could start from scratch and create a true home 3D printer, a 3D printer for kids. If someone wanted to make the “first on the desktop” for every kid in the world, what would that 3D printer look like and how would it work?

Artur began to work on the Origo, the 3D printer that will hopefully answer all those questions eventually.

But for a solo freelancer, it can be even more challenging to build your career when you don’t have an organization behind you. You’re responsible for your own networking and creating your own opportunities.

Freelance videographer Rosa Park misses having people to bounce ideas around with, so relies heavily on her social media for interaction.

“It’s kind of lonely not having co-workers,” says Ms. Park, who works out of a tiny downtown office. “I live on Facebook and Twitter. I try to cut it down, but I can’t. It’s the only way for me to be social.”

One of the benefits of Co-Working in a palce like the Queen Street Commons is that you get back into the tribal conditions that we all crave as humans but without the office politics!

Co-Working is exploding around the world as more and more of us work as freelancers and need to be socially connected.

Here is just North America

Here is the link to the world - there is even co working in Saudi Arabia!

At the Commons, as with other co working spaces, we offer a place where you can have a professional environment - meeting rooms etc - AND interact with others who may be in very different fields than you. It is a place to get help and fellowship as well as a good place to work and to meet outsiders.

But next month we are expanding this idea of a place only to a network that extends beyond the walls.

Fellowship does not mean that we are always in the same place. It can often be the launch pad for a great quest. So what might be our great quest? Might it be to make to make the little meangingful? For who saved the world in LOR? It was a hobbit.

This is who we really are. 70% of business on PEI has less than 5 employees. What if we had a quest to make this powerful? What if we could make this the core of the economy? What if being small meant that you could make a great living? Who might then stay? Your kids? Who might then come? The kind of people who would fit PEI?

So this then is what we at the Queen Street Commons seek to do. We seek to be a catalyst for this kind of Fellowship. We will do our best to help you help yourself and those you care about make it possible to have your own "Living".

We want to make "making a living" the best way to live on PEI.

As with all quests, they start humbly with the kind of people that the Dark Lords laugh at. As with all quests, the power of the Dark Lords is real and immense. Tolkien wrote LOR as a response to the industrialization of the world. That is what we are up against.

But rather than rail against the system, why not build a new one? The Industrial system was strong in Tolkien's day - but it is so weak now. This is surely the time?

Every quest starts with a few people and has to start with a few steps. In the next month, I will tell you about what few steps we intend to take. I hope that you might like to join us.

In Europe, the banks and mining companies bore the brunt of the selloff. Every bank and miner of any size opening lower on Thursday. French banking giant BNP Paribas lost more than 5 per cent, taking the one-week loss to 24 per cent and the 6-month loss to 56 per cent. Italy’s UniCredit shed 3 per cent, for a six-month loss of 64 per cent.

Some people are scared that their banks are bust - what does that mean for their savings and cash on deposit? I think the issue of safety will soon be on all our minds. So what to do? That is what this short post will introduce today.

Look at what is happening to the big European Banks - everyone knows that they are stuffed with assets that have no value. For many of the states in Europe are broke too. We are reaching the point at which the can can no longer be kicked down the field. For all the risk has been focused in the few mega banks. And having mega banks is what we have now.

Ah but we are OK in Canada. Yes we are in much better shape. But the US mega banks are not and we live in an interconnected world. Our banks may not have much exposure to European sovereign debt but we are exposed to the European banks. We have less exposure to the credit woes of the US but we are exposed to US banks.

We cannot isolate ourselves for we are part of a system.

Many are starting to talk about 2 ways out of this. From a policy point of view - to sever again the link between investment banking and banking. I think that this is inevitable but that it will take a long time and will demand a deepening of the crisis to get past all the vested interest that has done so well by leveraging off the banks balance sheets.

The more immediate way out is for us to think about what kind of financial institution is NOT linked to the global markets. The answer is right in front of us - the Credit Unions. They are wonderfully boring. Retail banking should be boring. It should be about mobilizing the community's cash and using it to grow the community.

Now many who run the credit unions want to be like the big boy bankers but the ones who see the truth of how this works could do well for us and for themselves.

70% of business on PEI has fewer than 5 employees. The big banks with all their use of technology no longer have the capacity to either look at the risk of this small but highly personal type of business and nor can they help to make this kind of business do better.

But the Credit Unions have this potential - and it is to conduct banking as it always was done for thousands of years. It is all about gaining a deep personal knowledge of who you are dealing with AND also helping that person to be more successful. It is a very active relationship of mentorship and mutual support.

We would have seen this on a micro level with the old General Store on PEI which to a large extent operated like a mini bank in the community. It was not just about extending credit until the harvest but of acting as the social glue in the community.

I intend to dig in deep into this topic. And and why me? I was a senior investment banker when I left my day job - I was one who then thought that combining investment banking and banking was a good thing! I was responsible for the strategic planning for CIBC and Wood Gundy. So I may be a villain but I do know a bit about how things work - enough to know that they don't and why now. Mea culpa!

September 21, 2011

•Chicago will vote in September on an ordinance that could make growing and selling produce within city limits much easier, potentially giving new purpose to the city's estimated 14,000 empty lots.

These advances come in the midst of a struggling economy, a changing climate, a global food system in peril, rising food prices, concern over lax food safety, and dwindling resources. For homesteaders, cultivating a corner of the yard or the back deck into a tangle of edible things has become one small way to regain purpose and control in an unpredictable time.

While self-sufficiency was once a necessity on the American frontier, transforming an entire yard into an urban minifarm takes considerable time and effort. Harriet Fasenfest in Portland, Ore., who calls herself a "householder," says the key lies in small, incremental steps.

"People want to live this life as a householder but they don't really know what that involves," says Ms. Fasenfest, author of "A Householder's Guide to the Universe," which offers tips and instructions on everything from creating a garden plan and budget to the alchemy of jammaking.

Beyond endless weeding and battles with slugs and nibbling wildlife, urban farming isn't as easy as deciding to dig up your lawn. Zoning laws can restrict ambitions by ruling against the appearance of "messy" lawns and running farm stands out of the front yards. In Oak Park, Mich., Julie Bass made national headlines in July when she faced jail time for breaking city codes by constructing raised vegetable beds in front of her suburban house. Among the charges: The beds were "not common to a front yard." (The charge was later dropped.) Probably most challenging, however, is the fact that long hours of work can sometimes yield very little in results.

Andrée Collier Zaleska of Jamaica Plain, Mass., is homesteading on 1,000 square feet behind her energy-efficient house. It took her two years to rid the backyard of an invasive, creeping vine. But the effort was worth it. Her garden supports two families during the summer months. Terraced beds in late August were plump with kale, parsnips, cabbage, carrots, pumpkins, and broccoli. A chicken coop at the corner of the yard stood empty – the arrival of its would-be feathered residents halted by Boston zoning laws.

The debate on PEI this election on Healthcare is the same old chestnut of Doctor access. We all want the security of having a Doctor. But not being spoken about is that as so many of us become ill as a result of how we live, the system will have to ration us.

This debate has begun. If you are 100 lbs overweight should you have access to Fertility treatments? Some complain that this denies these women their "rights". But what will be our "rights" for access in the future as chronic life style disease overwhelms us? Rights or not the costs will start to eat into the idea of universal access to treatment.

Look at the costs that arise from Type 2 Diabetes on PEI:

PEI adults in 2006 with diabetes had to be hospitalized much more often than those without it. 16 times more often for lower limb amputations. 6 times more often with kidney disease. They had 5 times more heart attacks. 4 times more heart failure. 3 times more strokes. They stayed 3 times longer in hospital. Had 2 times more visits to physicians and 2 times more to specialists. Most diabetics don’t just take one medication, but several. A typical regimen for an adult diabetic after a couple of years of treatment and following the dietary advice of the American Diabetes Association includes Metformin, Januvia, and Actos, a triple-drug treatment that costs around $420 per month. Two forms of insulin (slow- and fast-acting), along with two or three oral medications, is not at all uncommon.

And does anyone get well after treatment? No they don't. There is no medical cure. Lots of treatment but no medical cure. So by the age of 65 the average PEI man is completely disabled and then lives for another 9.7 years.

Now it is the election and well in elections we keep the issues simple - more Dr's is good right? But after the election the hard work will have to start. How do we slow the epidemic of lifestyle chronic disease will have to be the issue.